


Tell Me Anything

by ToukoTai



Series: Ready To Listen [2]
Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Age Swap, Aged-Up Hiro, Gen, big brother Hiro, little brother Tadashi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-03-13 13:17:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 14,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3382940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToukoTai/pseuds/ToukoTai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before you die, you live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to wait, but fuck it. Already posted this on tumblr so, may as well post it here too. This was thanks to a prompt someone threw at me for more asexual representation fic. And that person liked Big Hero Six and I never really got the chance to show asexual Hiro in TMAAI so, here ya go.

It starts when Hiro randomly decides to pick Tadashi up from school one day. Not an uncommon occurrence when Tadashi was younger, Hiro used to walk him to and from school all the time. But the practice had been dropped when he’d gone to college (and dropped out of college). Currently Hiro was seventeen, had hit his growth spurt last year and used every inch of his new height to lord it over Tadashi. Tadashi was thirteen and in his sophomore year at the same high school Hiro had blown through. If he stayed on track, he’d be graduating at sixteen.

Tadashi hadn’t ever considered how his brother was viewed by other kids, by kids Hiro’s own age in fact, it was just something that had never come up. Hiro had already been so far ahead in school, that Tadashi couldn’t remember a time when Hiro had been around kids his age. It’s sort of a shock when it happens.

Hiro had texted him during Tadashi’s lunchblock.

_Picking u up @ 2_

Two o’ clock found Tadashi leaning against the wall of the school next to the parking lot, where the car pick up’s waited. One of the girls in Tadashi’s bio class was sitting on the bike racks, near the pick up loop, chatting with her friends. She had the longest hair he’d ever seen, she tied it back for the bio labs (safety first!), but Tadashi always wondered how it never seemed to develop knots. And also how she avoided the demerits for dress code, her shorts were always really short. He swallows hard, ignoring how his cheeks heat up and tries to avoid looking at her. He rocks on his heels, focusing his attention on the tips of his shoes. Green converse, to match his brother’s black ones.

Girls, he should ask Hiro about girls. His brother seems to have plenty of female friends from his bot fighting scene. Tadashi watches him at night scrubbing the lipstick kiss off his cheek, so Aunt Cass won’t see. Every night a different color. (He misses the look of annoyed disgust in Hiro’s eyes, and how his nose wrinkles with distaste as he goes about this task.)

“Hey! Hey Tadashi!” His brother’s voice cuts across his thoughts, Tadashi’s head snaps up and there’s Hiro, bag casually slung over one shoulder, the sleeves of his hoodie bunched up around his elbows and helmet tucked under one arm, his hair the same ‘just rolled out of bed’ ruffled mess that really was because he had just rolled out of bed and only bothered with the minimal amount of brushing needed. He was walking over to Tadashi from the school entrance.

Tadashi was struck by just how well Hiro blended into his surroundings, he looked like any other junior or senior on their way home after school. Tadashi was used to his brother being surrounded by adults, by people far older then he was. Hiro always seemed to stand out because he was always so much younger then his ‘peers’. But here, everyone was the same age or around the same age as him. It was _different_ seeing Hiro walk confidently through the crowd of high schoolers to his side.

“How’s it going?” Hiro stopped next to him, handing over his helmet to freely adjust his backpack.

“What were _you_ doing?” Tadashi ignored the first question with one of his own, because Hiro was walking to him as though he’d just exited the school. Hiro ran a hand through his own hair, scratching at the back of his head, grinning at Tadashi.

“One of my old teachers asked me to do a talk on robotics for his shop class. And it’s not like I had anything else to do today, so.” His brother took back the helmet. “Wanna go out for ramen?” Tadashi nods happily. Any time Hiro isn’t out being the menace to society that he is, is time Tadashi wants to encourage. “Awesome.” Tadashi doesn’t see the looks his brother gets from the girls around the bike rack.

 

“So Tadashi.” Tadashi looks up from under his bangs at the girl who addresses him. It’s the following day at bio and he’s a little weirded out at the looks he’s been getting all morning. He’d forgotten to ask Hiro about girls yesterday. “Finish the homework last night?”

“Yeah. It got a little rough in the middle but managed to pull through.” He told her with a smile. Tadashi really hopes she doesn’t ask to copy it, he’s stickler for academic honesty, it’s cost him a few friends, but as Hiro pointed out, they probably weren’t people he wanted as friends to begin with.

“Oh me too.” She tosses a look over her shoulder to where her friends are sitting around their lab table. There’s an explosion of hurried whispers and giggles that Tadashi can’t quite make out, before she turns back to face him. “So, who was that yesterday?” Tadashi blinks at her. “The guy who came to pick you up?” She clarifies, jutting one hip against his lab table.

“That was Hiro.” Tadashi says, he’s not sure why she’s asking. It’s not like Hiro’s going to make a habit of hanging out at the high school he did everything in his power to escape from. “He’s my older brother.”

“How much older? He looked really young, like our age even.” Tadashi’s never run away from a conversation where he could talk about Hiro, but he kind of wants to now.

“He’s seventeen.” He answers warily. The smile he gets is bright and cheerful and his stomach turns hot.

“Oh cool, does he go to a different school? I’ve never seen him around.”

“No, he doesn’t, he’s out of school.” Tadashi takes a moment to collect his thoughts. Very aware of the blush creeping up his neck and spreading to his ears. “He graduated early.”

“Being smart must run in your family or something. Does he pick you up a lot?” He doesn’t understand where the questions are coming from or where they’re leading, but he really likes the perfume she’s wearing. Something floral.

“Um, not usually?”

“Oh,” She looks vaguely disappointed. “Well, he’s super cute.” And she’s gone. Tadashi doesn’t remember what they go over in bio and spends the rest of the day in a permanent state of confusion. There’s a lot of random girls coming up to him throughout the day. He has no idea what’s going on, Hiro features in most of the conversations he has. By the end of the day, on the walk home, he comes to the conclusion that Hiro is, as he was told that morning, _super cute_. So if he follows that, Hiro must have a lot of experience with girls, evidence: just look at the second hand attention Tadashi was getting because of him! He resolves to ask Hiro that night.

He forgets that Hiro’s never brought home, or even mentioned, a girlfriend, or boyfriend or anyone he might be attracted to, for that matter.

 

That afternoon, Tadashi sits on Hiro’s bed to do his homework. Hiro is busy with a bot design on his computer, and doesn’t question Tadashi’s change of venue.

“Hey Hiro?” Tadashi starts, this is so awkward.

“Yeah bud?” Hiro swings around in the desk chair to face him. Tadashi twists his fingers in the hem of his shirt, staring a hole in his math textbook.

“How…how do you talk to girls?” He risks a glance, the blank look Hiro’s giving him is almost comically funny.

“Like you would other people…?” Hiro says, confusion in every line of his face and voice.

“No! Not like…not like that.” God, this is _mortifying_. “How do you ask girls out?” He tries. The look of understanding blooms across his brother’s face.

“Ooooooooh.” If Tadashi thought that would spur his brother into a revealing talk on the nature of romance, his hopes were quickly dashed in the next second. “No idea. It’s never come up.”

“Never come up?” Hiro looks entirely nonchalant about the subject whereas Tadashi can hardly keep his voice steady.

“Never really had an interest in dating. Guys or girls. Seems way too complicated.” That is a lot more information then Tadashi really wanted to know and yet not enough either. “The whole thing just seems like too much work in general.” Now he’s just really confused.

“But, but at the bot fights! They kiss you!” Tadashi protests. Hiro just quirks an eyebrow at him.

“The refs do, yeah,” He agrees, tone sarcastic. “ _on the cheek_. They do that because they know it annoys me.”

“What?” Hiro just sighs. Like this is something he’d rather not get into, but he does anyway, because Tadashi is the one who asked.

“Pretty sure it’s just a giant joke for them.” Hiro tells him. “That something other guys and probably more then a few girls, I don’t judge, would _kill_ for a chance at,” His brother’s hands make a ‘what can you do’ gesture. “I don’t want. At all.” His brow furrows for a second. “Making it with a ref is _really_ hard to do, apparently.”

“So you’ve never…?” Tadashi can’t even bring himself to completely voice the question. This is _so_ embarrassing. Hiro, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to mind at all. Propping his cheek up with a closed fist as he considers the half question.

“Hm, no. I’ve never had the time. It just seems so…needlessly messy.” Tadashi ducks his head in the hopes of hiding his bright red blush.

“You don’t…um… you don’t…?” Hiro smiles at him, it’s a soft kind of smile. A patient one.

“No.” He says gently. “I don’t work like that. Kind of funny in a way.” His eyes seem to be looking at a spot over Tadashi’s head. “There was this one awkward bot battler back when I was first kicking ass, making a name for myself, ya know? She did this whole seduction act to try and throw me off. Thought she’d be able to beat me if I was ‘distracted’. It backfired. _Spectacularly_.” Hiro grins at him sheepishly. “I had no idea what she was doing, she was too focused on trying to _seduce_ me, I just wanted the whole thing to be over, so I beat her in record time. The refs spent the entire night laughing. Pretty sure they still laugh about it now.”

What Tadashi comes away with, is that Hiro is not going to be any help to him on this subject, has no sense of shame and his brother is more interested in bot fighting then he is in the girls(or guys) at Tadashi’s school his own age. It’s a sort of cruel irony that those same kids are extremely interested in him, if the attention Tadashi still gets, even weeks after Hiro’s appearance at his school, is any indication.

Tadashi gets asked for Hiro’s social media accounts or cell number at least once per day the first two weeks after. He refuses. While it would make for a funny prank, there’s a small streak of protectiveness in Tadashi. He feels a strong need to keep Hiro separate from the kids clamoring for his info at school, it’s the least he can do for all the times Hiro has protected him over the years.

Besides, Hiro is his brother, his idiot big brother, who is brilliant at science and can throw together an entire desktop computer from the ground up in under an hour, not to mention code at the speed of light itself with little to no mistakes and invent whole new robots before breakfast. Hiro, his brother, who couldn’t carry a normal small talk conversation without coming to blows with the other party to save his life, who thought dating was a waste of time, who was entirely ignorant of matters of a sexual nature. So here is the moment where Tadashi has to step in for him. And he’s more then happy to do it.

Hiro’s not actually ignorant, the underground bot fighting scene didn’t allow for that kind of luxury, but it’s not something Hiro discusses with Tadashi either. While talking with Tadashi when the boy had brought it up on his own was okay, Hiro drew the line at sharing some of the more… _interesting_ encounters. Like learning how to tie a cherry stem in a knot with his tongue. He’d expanded on the practice to unwrapping starburst in his mouth. Useful _and_ afforded him bragging rights. Some of the bot fighters had been _very_ impressed with the trick. But these were things he wasn’t exactly going to talk about with his little brother.

The entire talk hangs in the back of Tadashi’s mind, until his health class starts sex ed the next week. And while extremely embarrassing, he does hear a very specific term. The lightbulb in his head goes off and the entire day he can’t wait to get home.

“You’re asexual!” He shouts, slamming the door to their room open and pointing at Hiro, who’s sitting in his desk chair with Mochi curled around his shoulders, a ruler and pencil at hand, paper vellum spread over the desk in front of him.

“Sure.” Hiro agrees, completely unimpressed and uncaring, raising a hand to scratch Mochi under the chin, not even looking up from his work. And Tadashi comes to the realization that Hiro is going to care as much about human sexuality, including his own, as Mochi does.

Meaning not at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed that. A lot of this is based around personal experience. If you'd like to send a prompt, you can do so at my tumblr: http://pkmn-trainer-touko-tajiri.tumblr.com/  
> No guarantee of it being written though.  
> This is not going to be updated on a set schedule and will not be very long either. Just a series of leftovers and thoughts that I turned into one shots from Tell Me All About It


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tadashi never liked when Hiro wasn't home on time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ages: Tadashi is 7 and Hiro is 11  
> Hiro is in his second year of high school(sophomore) and Tadashi is in fourth grade(skipped two grades).  
> I realized that I could just post shit to this WHENEVER I WANTED. No one person should have this much power.

“You’re late!” Hiro winced, dropping his bag next to the bedroom door and completely abandoning any pretense at stealth. Tadashi was standing on the foot of Hiro’s bed with a finger pointed dramatically at him.

“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” Hiro asked, tugging his arms out of his hoodie and letting it fall to the floor as he kicked his shoes off.

“Nuh-uh.” Tadashi stuck his tongue out at his older brother.

“Pretty sure it is.” Hiro approached his bed. His younger brother was dressed in pajamas and had the wide eyed frantic look of an overtired child.

“You’re supposed to be back before my bedtime.” Tadashi told him angrily, the bed adding height enough to allow him to tower over his eleven year old brother. “So it’s  not past my bedtime.” The two stared at each other until Tadashi added “yet.” with an imperious sniff. Hiro snickered at him.

“Well, I’m home now, so,” He suddenly reached out, snagging Tadashi around the middle, toppling the surprised, smaller child over his shoulder. “bedtime!”

“No! Hiro, leggo!” Tadashi hissed, swinging his legs and pounding fists against his brother’s back. Hiro only laughed at him, staggering a little off balance around the room, twirling slowly and with an exaggerated ‘oh no’, flopped onto his bed. Tadashi getting a facefull of mattress and blankets. The muffled sound of outrage makes Hiro laugh harder, arms winding tightly around his brother’s waist as the younger tried to squirm out of his grasp. With a gasp, Tadashi managed to free his upper half from the sheets and blankets. He smacked the top of Hiro’s head with an open palm.

“Bonehead!” Hiro shifted around on the bed, so he was lying more comfortably, Tadashi tucked against his chest like a stuffed animal.

“Quiet nerdling. It’s totally your bedtime now.” For whatever reason that doesn’t calm down Tadashi. He pushes against Hiro’s chest.

“You can’t go to sleep yet!”

“Why not?” Hiro’s voice was amused.

“You haven’t changed into pj’s!” Tadashi’s tone was indignant with a side order of scandalized. “Or brushed your teeth!”

“Alright, alright.” Hiro yanked his heavy comforter over and around Tadashi and rolled out of bed to the squawk of his little brother. Taking his shirt and shorts off, while wiping blearily at his eyes and pulling on a pair of plaid sweatpants and a black t-shirt. Tadashi fought his way out of the prison of sheets in time to stumble down the stairs after Hiro, to the bathroom. He stopped outside the door, leaning against the wall, listening to Hiro brushing his teeth.

“Hiro?”

“Mmmm?’ Hiro leaned back out of the bathroom, the end of his toothbrush sticking out of his mouth, cheeks puffed out with foam.

“Why were you late?” His brother merely raised his eyebrows, disappearing back into the bathroom, Tadashi hears him spit and the faucet run. Hiro exits the bathroom and without breaking stride, grabs him up, hefting him in arms that are skinny, but are used to hauling around solid pieces of metal or wood and working sharp, dangerous tools, keeping them steady. For all that Hiro doesn't look like he could lift a ten pound weight, let alone his little brother, Tadashi’s never felt as secure as when his brother carries him. Hiro never falters, his arms never shake and he never even pretends to drop Tadashi. Tadashi winds his arms around Hiro’s neck, resting his head on his brother’s shoulder.

“Working on something at the club. It’s going to be  awesome nerdling, just wait.” Hiro’s minty, just brushed, breath tickles Tadashi’s ear and he twists his face harder into Hiro’s shoulder. Hiro deliberately blows a puff of air into Tadashi’s ear to hear him growl and try to meld his face into Hiro’s neck.

Now that Hiro is back, and the excitement is over, Tadashi’s body starts shutting down. He’s too tired to even lift his head when Aunt Cass’s door opens. Hiro stops his journey back to their room.

“He refused to go to bed, said it wasn’t his bedtime if you weren’t home.” She says. He feels Hiro nod. “What have you learned?”

“Not to get too caught up at the club and be home before eight.” Hiro reports obediently. Tadashi feels Aunt Cass run a hand through Hiro’s hair.

“My little high-school man.” Her voice is exasperated but fond. “You work too hard sometimes.” In Tadashi’s opinion his brother works too hard  all the time. Hiro is always,  always doing something. Either working on school work, doing his own extra projects in the garage, helping at the cafe or taking care of Tadashi, he wonders how his brother manages  not to look like a tired zombie. But Hiro is always bright eyed and bushy tailed, even at nine o'clock at night after a full day at school and the robotics club after school and carrying his little brother around the house.

“I’m fine.” Tadashi can both hear and feel Hiro speak. His throat vibrating against Tadashi’s cheek. Aunt Cass brushes her hand through Tadashi’s hair as well and he mumbles a complaint. He’s not a little kid anymore. (even if Hiro is carrying him. That’s an entirely different thing.)

“Bed. Both of you.” Hiro doesn’t argue with her and Tadashi doesn’t have the energy for it.

“Night, Aunt Cass.” Tadashi’s eyes slip closed when Hiro starts up the stairs. But he rouses himself to Hiro tucking him into bed, on Tadashi’s side of the room.

“Will you show me?” Hiro ruffles his hair gently, not needing any clarification for what Tadashi is asking about.

“When it's finished. _Duh_ , of course I will.” Tadashi holds up his hand, pinky extended.

“Pinky promise?” Hiro hooks his pinky around Tadashi’s.

“Pinky promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this AU, Hiro joins his high school's robotics club as a way to fill out his extracurricular activities and work on things for his mechanical engineer portfolio. (Also because his mom signed him up for his middle school robotics club and he knows most of the kids from then.) It's one of the few things he doesn't hate about high school, especially when his club gets invited to tour SFIT.  
> Also Hiro called Aunt Cass and told her he'd be late, which is why she's not worried, only mildly annoyed that Tadashi decided to rebel over this.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little story background from Hiro's side of things.

Hiro understood that his little brother had a raging inferiority complex. Understood that, understood why and was staunchly against it in all forms. His little brother was nothing short of _absolutely amazing_. Hiro was all too aware of his own flaws. Yes, he was a genius, a super genius, the best genius around even. But he was prone to violence, to anger, to doing stupid shit that he knew would get him in trouble. Reckless to a fault. He really couldn’t help himself sometimes.

 _Impulse issues_ the therapist Aunt Cass made him go to had labeled it. The whole therapy thing had lasted a month. After the first two sessions Hiro had gone to the library and the internet and read everything to do with mental health. And then spent the remaining sessions convincing his therapist that he had several different completely at odds with each other diagnoses. Aunt Cass had cancelled the appointments in frustration.(He felt bad about all the trouble he had caused Aunt Cass. He’d started picking up extra shifts at the cafe as a way to say sorry when he couldn’t verbalize it himself.)

The point of this was, that Hiro knew how not nice of a person he was. Bot fighting was just another outlet. But Tadashi. Tadashi was a genuinely nice person. His little brother was selfless, kind and ridiculously generous. Which Hiro considered amazing when you took into account the fact that Tadashi’s one and only role model growing up had been him. Hiro had taken that responsibility very, _very_ seriously. It was one of the things his parents had managed to impress on him in the short time they had together.

_“You need to be a good example for Tadashi, Hiro. He’s going to look up to you.”_

Hiro had never brought anything but his A game for his brother. And perhaps he’d been a bit...too overzealous. Because now Tadashi believed nothing he’d ever do would measure up to what Hiro hadn’t even bothered to accomplish yet.

And that didn’t sit well with Hiro.

As much as it pained Hiro to admit, it seemed like Tadashi would benefit from time spent _away_ from him. With people more on his level, so he’d see how good he was.(and stop measuring himself against Hiro.) High school wasn’t quite accomplishing that, since it was the same high school Hiro had attended and _a lot_ of the teachers still remembered him, Tadashi needed something more.

Then that confrontation with Megabot had come up and the absolute last thing Hiro wanted was for Tadashi to follow him into bot fighting. It would be an absolute _waste_ of Tadashi’s talents. (Not that it wasn’t a waste of Hiro’s but he’d needed the distraction at the time.) And it wasn’t safe. Hiro had barely made it through on his own, too many close calls to count, too many people out for his blood. No way he was letting Tadashi wander into that just because he wanted to be like Hiro. _No way in hell._

But if Tadashi was bent on following Hiro’s path, then he could damn well start at the beginning. With the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology.

Tadashi was amazing with robotics, and he wanted to help people, the internship seemed like a good fit. One of Hiro’s old professors had been more then happy to hear Hiro out and to evaluate Tadashi’s portfolio. Even though it ached something fierce, he’d sent an email to Professor Callaghan as well, though avoiding any direct interaction with the man himself.(Hiro hadn’t realized that Professor Callaghan would be Tadashi’s mentor in the program, though he probably should have. It still _hurt_ to think of Professor Callaghan.)

With Tadashi safely squared away, Hiro had turned back to his bot building and realized...he hadn’t missed it. At all. He’d been more excited with helping Tadashi plan out his personal care bot for his portfolio then he was now at looking over the kind of, sort of, completed custom battle bots.

Another unexpected side effect was that Tadashi had started campaigning hard for Hiro to return to SFIT.

Which was frankly, adorable as all get out.

He also realized the gnawing ache of grief wasn't there when he thought of SFIT. Maybe it hadn't been for a while, but by now it was second nature to flinch, to run, to hide when confronted with his old school that he hadn't noticed when it disappeared.Hiro could feel he was ready. Ready to go back, get in the game, pick up where he left off, to move on. But there was just something missing. An extra push he needed for it to really feel right. To feel like he wouldn't always be looking for the brown ponytail bobbing around a corner at the edge of his vision.

It turned out his brother was more then willing to provide that extra push.

Hiro couldn’t be prouder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aunt Cass may not have picked up a parenting book, but Hiro read the entire section and the supplementary articles. Nothing is going to stop him from making sure his little brother grows up to be AWESOME.  
> He does, Hiro's just not there for it.  
> HA  
> made you sad.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiro meets the Tadashi's lab crew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Work was closed today due to snooooow, so I finished this

They’re one for five and already things are going according to plan. Sorta. Kinda. Okay, maybe Gogo hadn’t been the best friend to introduce Hiro to at first. But her station had been the closest to the door and had the most shiny objects. Sometimes Tadashi swore his brother had more in common with Mochi then anyone realized.

“Hey.” Her voice is muffled by the helmet, but it’s still sharp. “Who are you?” Hiro straightens up from bending over her workstation and Tadashi can feel him tense for a fight.

“Hey Gogo,” Tadashi slides next to his brother. “This is my brother, Hiro!” Hiro’s attention has already shifted back to the bike in the time it takes for Gogo to remove her helmet and crack her gum.

“Electromag suspension huh?” He’s folded his arms over his chest and is eyeing the bike. Tadashi knows that look. It’s the one Hiro gets when his mind is working through a problem.

“Zero resistance, faster ride.” Gogo yanks off a disc. “But not fast enough, not yet.”

“Have you thought of just scraping the bike idea?” Hiro is rubbing his chin in the way that means he’s got a plan. Tadashi leans against Gogo’s workstation, eagerly watching the proceedings.

“Excuse me?” Gogo’s gripped the disc about to toss it, but she pauses to look at Hiro. Hiro is still looking at the bike.

“What if you did something like,” He spins a hand in the air. “speed skating? It would give more maneuverability.” Gogo looks from the bike to the disc in her hand and back again. She curses and tosses the disc in the reject pile.

“Beat it, brianiac, I got work to do.” She snaps, Tadashi takes this as his cue and grabs Hiro’s hand before his brother can snap back at her, dragging him away. He knows exactly who to introduce his brother to next.

“Hey Wasabi,” He darts into Wasabi’s workspace, a bemused Hiro tugged along behind him.

“Hold up little man.” Wasabi holds his heavily gloved hand up, from where he is behind one of the generators. “Behind the line, remember?” Tadashi nods and makes sure both he and Hiro are behind the yellow and black striped caution line on the floor. “What are you doing here this late anyway?”

“I’m picking up Baymax.” Tadashi rocks on his feet. “Hiro’s helping me out.”

“That’d be me.” Hiro says from behind Tadashi, dropping his hand on top of Tadashi’s head and tugging the bill of Tadashi’s cap down over the younger boy’s eyes, ignoring the sharp noise of outrage. “Hey.” Wasabi grins at them.

“We finally meet huh? Check this out.” He stepped back behind the two generators and held up an apple. “Catch.” With a flick of the wrist he sent the apple flying, where it sliced into tissue paper thin pieces.

“Nice.” Hiro twisted a scrap of apple in his fingers, before turning his eyes back to the generators. “Laser induced plasma?”

“Yeah, with just a touch of magnetic confinement, for precision purposes of course.”  Hiro nodded.

“Of course.” Wasabi was delicately replacing his tools but straightened up as Hiro wandered over. “Thanks for looking out for Tadashi.” Tadashi kept his mouth shut about how he was old enough to look after himself. Wasabi did help him a lot in terms of transportation when Hiro and Aunt Cass were unavailable.

“Hey, no problem, man.” Wasabi said giving Hiro’s hand a firm shake. “Tadashi’s a great kid.”

“Yeah well,” Hiro stuck his hands back into his hoodie pockets. “It’s appreciated.” Tadashi grinned up at Hiro hopefully as Gogo made an abrupt reappearance to make off with Wasabi’s tools. “Let’s go get your thing now, please.” His voice wasn’t nearly as strained as it had been leaving the house and Tadashi noted that the further into the lab they got, the more relaxed Hiro was. Almost, Tadashi knew, he almost had Hiro. He waved goodbye to Wasabi as he turned to lead Hiro away and almost got run over by four hundred pounds of tungsten carbonite. Hiro yanked him back at the last second by his sweater’s collar.

“Ohmygosh, sorry Tadashi!” Honey Lemon hops around the metallic ball once it’s come to a complete stop in her section. “I didn’t see you there! Are you okay?” Tadashi shakes himself out of his brother’s grasp.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Honey’s hands flutter over his shoulders and arms, patting him down reassuringly.

“So the reason you almost ran my brother down is…?” Hiro trailed off and raised his eyebrows. Honey Lemon, to Tadashi’s immense relief, didn’t take Hiro’s bait, smiling excitedly instead. (Tadashi made sure to step on Hiro’s foot when backing up.)

“Oh, oh! You must _Hiro_!” Hiro blinked in surprise, his eyes darted between Honey and Tadashi almost nervously.

“Yeeess?” He drawled out, as though unsure if this was the correct answer.

“I have heard _so much_ about you!” Honey Lemon squealed, yanking out her ear buds.

“You have?” Hiro gaze slid to pin Tadashi in place, Tadashi avoided meeting his eyes and whistled innocently, rocking on his heels. Like he wasn’t going to talk about his _super genius super awesome_ big brother to his best friends!

“Oh yes! I’ve been waiting to meet you since for-for _ever_!” And Tadashi gets a front row seat to Honey Lemon _completely_ throwing Hiro for a loop when she kissed him on both his cheeks in welcome. Tadashi probably should have warned Hiro about that, he knows how his brother isn’t exactly down for physical contact. But the way his back straightens and the rapid blinking and the extremely confused and unsure look on Hiro’s face means Tadashi has to cover his mouth with both hands to keep from giggling and risk sibling retribution later. “Perfect timing, perfect. Timing.” Honey says, grabbing Hiro by the hand and pulling him along in her wake, going through the steps of her experiment.

Surprisingly, Hiro stays pretty quiet and pretty compliant through the whole affair. Tadashi’s pretty sure it’s shock from Honey Lemon’s greeting, he figured it must have been a very long time since someone was so happy to meet Hiro, without wanting to hit him first, that Hiro didn’t quite know how to react. Tadashi thought it was maybe a tiny bit sad that if you came at Hiro ready for a fight, he’d be ten times more comfortable then if you tried to hug him. Try to hurt him and Hiro was ready for you, try to show him kindness and he’d run for the hills. Okay yeah, that was really sad.

Tadashi moment of angst, doesn’t last long. It last as long as it takes for Honey Lemon to poke the now pink ball of metal. The look on Hiro’s face when the pink cloud settles, _that’s_ the look Tadashi has been aiming for. The way he says “whoooa.” Drags it out with such a note of awe, of amazement. _That’s_ everything Tadashi been trying for. That’s the Hiro he’s been missing. The one who would come home from these very labs, practically overflowing with energy, with ideas, with new angles to show Tadashi.

_Wanna see something cool?_

Tadashi always wanted to see something cool. Always and forever. He’d drop everything and come running if his brother asked him that. He still would, he’d give _anything_ to hear that question from Hiro again. But Hiro never called his battle bots ‘cool’, he called them ‘sick’ or ‘awesome’, never ‘cool’. There’s a distinction there Tadashi knows. Battle Bots are things Hiro builds, he doesn’t _invent_ them, _create_ them. He hasn’t invented anything in a long time.

Now, watching Hiro’s open mouthed amazement, watching his _wonder_ is like seeing the sun again when there’s been nothing but rain.

“Chemical metal embrittlement. Pretty cool huh?” Honey says, cleaning off her glasses. Hiro smiles at her.

“Oh yeah, totally cool.” Tadashi fairly bounces over to them.

“That was awesome, Honey Lemon!” Hiro’s eyebrow quirks.

“Honey Lemon? Gogo? Wasabi?” Wasabi, stomping by in the background overhears them.

“I spill wasabi on my shirt _one time_ people!” He’s out the doors before anyone can comment though. Tadashi feels mildly offended on behalf of his friends, Hiro hangs out with people who probably have worse nicknames on account of being actual criminals. He’s not going to bring that up though, not when he’s _so close_ to achieving his goal.

“Fred comes up with the nicknames.” Tadashi gets a little bit of vindictive glee when Hiro asks:

“Who’s Fred?” And then yelps as Fred’s mascot head bumps his shoulder and the muffled voice from inside the costume comes through.

“This guy, right here.” Fred shoves the mouth if the costume open. “Don’t be alarmed, this isn’t my real body.” He reaches out and shakes Hiro’s hand. “Name’s Fred. By day, I am the school mascot, by night, I’m also the school mascot.”

“How the fu-” Hiro catches himself mid swear, Tadashi is still extremely impressed at Hiro’s commitment to not swear around him. “heck, did you manage to sneak up on me?” Fred sniffs, and buffs the claws of the mascot costume on his chest.

“I may or may not be a ninja.”

“Well, he isn’t _wrong_ , really.” Honey tells Hiro, tilting her head in his direction. “He’s not actually a ninja.” Hiro grinned, punching Fred on the shoulder.

“Coulda fooled me, dude. So what’s the school mascot’s major?” Fred laughed, plopping himself into the armchair set in a corner of the lab. This was everything Tadashi had hoped for. He was fairly vibrating in place over how well his plan was working.

“Oh no, man. I’m not a student; I’m a fan of _Science_.” Hiro’s mouth quirked. He was fighting not to start laughing.

“Oh really? What kind of science?” Fred scoffed.

“Like _all_ of it! I tried to get Honey Lemon to make me a brew that would turn someone, namely me, into a fire breathing lizard. But she says that’s ‘not science’.”

“It’s really not.” Honey Lemon said, walking carefully around a stack of comics next to Fred’s chair.

“Why would you need chemistry to do that?” Hiro interjected, one arm tucked under the elbow of his other as he gestures with it. “You could just modify or build a new costume to do those things.” Fred looked completely flabbergasted for a moment.

“Because…could, could you build something like that?” He asked finally, Hiro shifted his weight to one leg. Looking mildly unimpressed with Fred questioning his abilities.

“Uh, yeah? It would take a bit to figure out the weighting, fuel storage for the flame thrower. That sort of thing, but yeah. Could totally build you something like that.” Hiro took a step back as Fred stared at him in wonder. A little unused to such scrutiny.

“Now see?!” Fred gestured at Hiro with both hands. “This is what I’m talking about! I asked Wasabi for a shrink ray and you know what he said? ‘That’s not science Fred’. “ Wasabi folded his arms tiredly across his chest.

“I stand by that.” At some point Gogo had wandered over as well.

“Fine, how about an invisible sandwich?” His friends’ attention shifted from Hiro to Fred and Tadashi felt his older brother nudge his arm with an elbow. He looked up to meet Hiro’s smiling face, eyes bright with excitement.

“So, what have you been working on?” Tadashi could barely keep his happiness in. Hiro had gone from single mindedly get bro’s project, get home. To _asking_ him about it. About school. Hiro almost _never_ asked him about SFIT. Plus this meant that this time, Tadashi was the one who could ask it. He grinned up at Hiro.

“Wanna see something really cool?” Hiro smiled back at him, eyes going warm and soft. His hand dropped on Tadashi’s head, ruffling his hair through the hat.

“Always, nerdling.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was something that was supposed to go into the original story, but I didn't like how it was going so I cut it out. Then rotsloeh sent me a prompt asking to see the scene and since it was three fifths done, I went ahead and finished it. Reminder, you can send me prompts through my tumblr
> 
> Also rotsloeh was nice enough to draw [fanart](http://pkmn-trainer-touko-tajiri.tumblr.com/post/112137915262/hey-this-is-kinda-embarrassing-but-i-made-a-fan) of TMAAI.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiro was never much of a baseball person, but his dad had been, and so was Tadashi. He's pretty sure their dad would approve of his decision.

Hiro didn’t think he’d hate his family tree assignment as much as when Tadashi looks up at him from the careful graph of black lines and formally printed family names and asks him about their parents.

Because Tadashi doesn’t remember them. And Hiro does.

Hiro doesn’t have it in him to refuse his little brother this. The mental photo albums of his memory are his brother’s to pick through. He tells Tadashi about the big memories: his parents taking him to the amusement park, and throwing up on their dad after the tenth go on the Twister, the Christmas their dad had hid Hiro’s presents all over the house, the time their mother had spent every other day of the summer teaching him how to swim. And the little things too, how deep their father’s voice was, how firm and powerful their mother’s hugs were. The way the light hit her earrings, their father’s favorite ice cream flavor. What kind of shirts he wore to work, how she would always come right home at five on the dot.

Hiro does his best to paint the fullest picture of their parents that he can for Tadashi. Because Tadashi will never know them like Hiro does, like Aunt Cass does. It’s the least and the best he can do.

Hiro takes a good look at Tadashi for a long moment. And makes a decision.

“Wait here.” He leaves Tadashi at the kitchen table with Hiro’s homework assignment spread over the surface. Thumps up the stairs to their room and digs into the back of his bottom drawer. He saved one of the best memories for last.

“So like a week before you were born,” Hiro starts as he hits the last few steps back down, Tadashi watches him approach from the table.

“What’s-”

“Quiet nerdling, I’m telling a story here.” Hiro drops down into his chair and places a ballcap on the table. “Right, so a week before you were born, dad took me to a Ninja’s game. First ballgame, rite of passage and all that. Too bad for him, I’m not much of a ballgame person.” Tadashi smiles wanly at that. It’s true. Hiro humors him by watching the games with him on tv, but his brother always manages to fall asleep by the fourth inning. He listens intently as Hiro recounts the first game he ever saw. Finally finishing with: “You know what? I don’t even remember who won.” Hiro laughs at Tadashi’s annoyed snort. “Yeah, that’s what dad thought too, but he bought me this hat after.” Hiro picks up the baseball hat and puts it on Tadashi, yanking extra hard on the brim so it covers his little brother’s eyes, and half his face the hat is so large. “Your’s now.” He proclaims.

Tadashi uses both hands to pull the brim back up and has to adjust the back of the hat so it doesn’t sink down again. He looks at Hiro with wide brown eyes.

“For real?” He asks hopefully. Hiro has to smile at him, it’s not as wide or as bright as his usual smiles. It’s one that’s soft and sad.

“For real.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tadashi is a baseball nerd and Hiro just doesn't see the point in watching someone play a sport that you can go play yourself. He tries to supportive of his little brother's interests, god how he tries, but he just wasn't made to sit on a couch and watch other people be active.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt left on my tumblr: "Tadashi doesn't know but that time when he was 8 and almost broke his arm because of bullies, Hiro got so angry that he didn't just made sure that the responsible were expelled, he also made very, very clear to the entire school (and city, actually) that whoaver messed with his brother wouldn't get away with it."
> 
> I changed some things around. Tadashi is ten, Hiro is thirteen. It’s pretty difficult to get expelled from public school, at least in my experience, so Hiro just goes for brute force enforcement. It would also be very hard for him to intimidate the entire city at thirteen when he hasn’t even graduated high school yet and keep Tadashi in the dark about it. But he manages the middle school just fine.  
> Also working on a…twin piece to this, taking place a few years down the line in the wonderful world of back alley bot fighting.

Tadashi skips his last grade when he turns ten; he finishes fifth grade and when the summer ends he starts seventh instead of sixth. It’s something of a huge adjustment. Middle school is in a whole other building, it’s much, much bigger than his old elementary school. There’s no recess, only a half hour study hall and he doesn’t know any of the kids in his grade.

He doesn’t remember it being quite this nerve wrecking and difficult the last time he skipped a grade. But then the last time he’d skipped a grade was just from first to second and everyone was still new to each other. None of his old friends share classes or are even in the same wing of the school as him. He feels isolated and it leaves him vulnerable.

There’s a boy in his new grade, who’s bigger then him. Which, okay there are a lot of bigger kids in seventh grade, Tadashi still has growing to do, and he’s by the far the smallest. But this particular larger boy has it out for Tadashi. And Tadashi has no idea why.

It starts out small with hard nudges in the hallway, the occasional foot left out in the aisle for him to trip over. And then it escalates until he’s getting shoved into the hard bank of lockers and cornered after school. The boy grabs Tadashi’s arm so hard one day he leaves a hard shaped bruise on his upper arm.

It’s made worse because Tadashi doesn’t want to tell Hiro. Hiro is starting his senior year of high school and his work load is  immense . He walks Tadashi to school, same as always, the middle school is on route to the high school at least, but Hiro has so many afterschool things, he’s almost never there to walk Tadashi home. And he gets home really late, Hiro’s always seemed to have bottomless energy, but Tadashi doesn’t want to add to the stress Hiro  has to be under.

Except he underestimates Hiro’s skills of observation. Forgets that there’s no territory in school that Hiro hasn’t gone through before him. It’d never crossed Tadashi’s mind that Hiro had had to deal with his own bullies.

“You doing okay, nerdling?” Hiro asks him one night, eyebrows furrowed in concern. Tadashi makes himself stop rubbing the bruise on his upper arm through his shirt and smiles at Hiro. “Adjusting alright? I know skipping grades can be a bit of a...shock.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Everything’s pretty much normalish? I mean, I’ve skipped a grade before, I know how this goes.” Hiro doesn’t look convinced, but he shrugs and goes back to the homework in front of him. Tadashi thinks that’s the end of it, until Hiro makes a surprise visit to come to pick him up from school the next day. It also happens to be the time of day where he gets picked on the most. He gasps as he’s pushed viciously into the brick school wall. Hits it right where the hand shaped bruise on his arm is. Tadashi closes his eyes and braces for the next hit that never comes.

“The hell do you think you’re doing?” Tadashi’s eyes fly open and his brother is standing there, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Hiro isn’t very tall at fourteen, only an inch or two taller then the other boy, he’s yet to hit his growth spurt, but what he lacks in height he makes up for in presence. Pure, unadulterated,  angry presence. Tadashi doesn’t think he’s ever seen Hiro as angry as right then. His brother’s eyes look capable of shooting fire and his mouth is drawn in such a tight line his lips are almost nonexistent. It’s enough to make Tadashi want to run, so it’s no surprise when his tormentor turns tail and runs.

Hiro doesn’t bother chasing after him, he stalks over to Tadashi. Every movement is barely controlled anger. But Hiro doesn’t say anything to him, just bends down and gathers Tadashi’s dropped things. Slings the backpack over his shoulder.

“Show me.” It’s a hard command and one Tadashi can’t ignore. So he rolls up sleeve and shows his brother the hand shaped bruise he’s been hiding. Hiro takes his arm, his fingers firm but gentle as he twists Tadashi’s arm to the sunlight, inspects the mottled black and purple flesh. Tadashi finds himself holding his breath, but Hiro’s demeanor doesn’t change, he taps the bruise in different places with a finger and a few times Tadashi can’t help but gasp. Finally, he’s satisfied and let’s Tadashi’s arm go, let’s him roll his sleeve down quickly and steps back.

“Come on.” Hiro’s voice is softer now, complete contrast to his body language. “Let’s go home.” Tadashi pushes off the wall to stagger after Hiro, catching up to him and tugging on the back of his shirt.

“Hiro, I-” He’s not sure what he was going to say. If he was going to apologise or what. He doesn’t get the chance because Hiro cuts him off with a fond hair ruffle.

“Don’t worry about it, nerdling.” He says, and it looks like he’s calmed down enough to smile at Tadashi, even if the smile does nothing to ease the burning anger in his eyes. “It’s going to be okay.” 

And Tadashi believes him. He always believes Hiro, he’s never been given a reason not to. At home that night Hiro gives him an ice pack and bruise cream and several rolls of bandages.

“Don’t hide something like this.” Hiro says firmly. “I don’t care how much you think it’s going to burden me.  Tell me when you get hurt .” Tadashi nods nods nods, because Hiro shouldn’t be so serious and angry. This wrathful person is not who his brother is. His brother is energetic and happy and playful. His brother is teasing and joking, sometimes angry when Tadashi goes a little too far, but never anything like this. Hiro pats him on the shoulder, and heads back over to his side of the room. A few minutes later Tadashi hears him humming along to his headphones.

He hopes that’s the end of it.

And it is, for some reason the next day and all the days after, Tadashi is never bothered again. In fact when his previous bully sees him, the boy almost immediately turns away or finds somewhere else to be. Tadashi doesn’t really think anything of it, probably seeing Hiro that angry had scared him off.

Really, if only Tadashi knew.

_“Let me make something perfectly clear to you.” Hiro’s voice is deadly calm from his position straddling the back of the boy, pushing his face into the ground with Hiro tugging his arm up at an awkward angle. A bone breaking angle. “You touch my brother again; you go near him, you even as much as look at him funny?” His hand yanks the boy’s arm up higher and he ignores the shriek. Nothing’s broken. Yet. “You’ll be the one walking away with a broken arm, for starters. Got it?” He hisses and the boy sobs and nods against the ground. “Good, spread the word.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reminder: still accepting prompts on my tumblr


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a prompt on my tumblr: For the tell me anything fic, how bout the first time Tadashi finds out that Hiro has been bot fighting?
> 
> This is a couple weeks after Hiro drops out of SFIT and he's a lot more of an emo brat then normal.

The first time Tadashi catches him, is not Hiro’s first bot fight. It’s his sixth. It’s way too late for Tadashi’s interference. Hiro’s already hooked. And Tadashi doesn’t catch him; so much as ask very pointed questions that Hiro never directly answers, while answering them. Tadashi is not stupid, he knows something’s up with Hiro. And the bot fighting is only a side effect.  Hiro had been at the San Franskoyo Institute of Technology for just over a year, was only in the second week of his sophomore year when he suddenly dropped out.

They had a huge fight over it. Hiro and him. The biggest fight they’d ever had. Tadashi blames the fight for him not noticing what Hiro was up to sooner. He knows his big brother like the back of his hand. The bot fighting had come out of left field.

He figures it out when he realizes that Megabot, the bot Hiro had built for him when he left high school, a source of some shame for Tadashi, was no longer in its spot on the shelf over Hiro’s computer.  Tadashi finds him in the garage lab, sitting on one of the workbenches. He’d been modified and his face was no longer the bright sunshine yellow smiley face, but a brilliant red angry face. Tadashi picks the bot up; the controller is on the bench as well. It’s definitely different from the last time Tadashi had seen it. (failed at using it.)

“Hey Tadashi, what’re you doing down here? Shouldn’t you be doing homework or something?” Hiro asks from the battered couch in the corner. He raises an eyebrow at Tadashi but doesn’t bother to get up from where he’s sprawled across the cushions. Tadashi puts it all together in an instant. Modified Megabot, his brother’s changed sleeping patterns, the new bruises on his arms and split knuckles that he’d tried to play off as accidents in the lab and of course, a sudden increase in cash, evident in the new parts dumped into Megabot, and the new tools around the garage lab.

“You’re bot fighting.” He says in a whisper, images of news stories, red and blue lights flashing across the screen of broken up bot fighting rings, slide through his mind. His brother, his big troubled brother going to those meetings, running through those alley ways, things made sense now and it scared Tadashi.

“So what if I am.” Hiro sits up, stands up, walks across the garage to Tadashi. Tadashi looks down at Megabot in his hands and then back up at Hiro.

“Bot fighting is illegal.” It’s really the only thing he can think to say.

“No, _betting_ on bot fighting is illegal.” Hiro’s voice was patient, but sharp. He knew what Tadashi was getting at. Neither says anything, the only way Hiro could be getting the money he has is by betting. Tadashi doesn’t want to ask it out loud and Hiro won’t tell him unless he asks.

“Why?” This is a dangerous question; it’s what set off their last fight. And just like last time, Hiro doesn’t answer; he holds his hand out for Megabot though. Tadashi just clutches the bot tighter. He can feel the tension between them jacking up; can feel the storm clouds of another fight on the horizon. He doesn’t want to fight though, he just wants Hiro back. Not the angry, stoic stranger that had taken his place. _Think Tadashi_ , he tells himself, _‘why’ doesn’t work, try something new_.

“I’m worried.” Tadashi drops the line of questioning completely. It’s time to stop playing offense and defense. Hiro is his brother not an enemy. Hiro’s face twists in confusion and his hand lowers. “I’m scared.” Tadashi admits, it feels more real now that he’s said it out loud. “I’m scared you’re going to get hurt. Really bad. I’m scared you’re going to leave me alone.”

He finds himself staring into Hiro’s eyes, his brother’s hands on his shoulders.

“You really think that?” Tadashi swallows and nods. He’s yanked into the tightest hug Hiro’s ever given him.

“Sorry.” Hiro’s voice is right next to his ear. “Didn’t mean to make you feel that way.” Tadashi rests his forehead against Hiro’s collarbone, closes his eyes with a sigh. “I’m…I’m working through some things. Difficult things.”

“Can you tell me?” Tadashi dares to hope, but Hiro shakes his head and he feels the back and forth motion on his neck.

“Not yet. Someday, but not today.”

“And bot fighting…?” Because Tadashi isn’t going to lose sight of what started this mess.

“Helps. A little.” Tadashi grumbles at that under his breath. Hiro pulls away and Tadashi opens his eyes to squint glare at Hiro.  “How about, if you give me Megabot back,” Hiro holds out his hand again. “I promise I’ll be extra careful.” Tadashi knows that’s as good as he’s going to get, so he hands Megabot back over.

That wasn’t the end of it though, not if Tadashi had anything to say about it. In the following months he tried everything short of telling Aunt Cass.

The most effective method he’d found was sneaking out after Hiro. He’s not one hundred percent sure how Hiro always manages to find him before he gets to the bot fights. But if he had to guess, it was the same method Tadashi used to keep track of Hiro.

Trackers.

Tadashi had managed to hide small GPS trackers in the seams of Hiro’s hoodies and jackets. He didn’t feel too bad about it because Hiro had ‘borrowed’ his phone one day and the next night, when Tadashi was out trying to find him, Hiro had found him first. Tadashi made sure to keep his phone on him at all times. It was weird but it made him feel safe, that no matter where he was, Hiro would be able to find him. Hiro probably didn’t appreciate the reverse but if he couldn’t find the trackers to disable them himself, that wasn’t Tadashi’s problem. It was the exact opposite in fact.

The gist of Tadashi’s preventive measure was this:

While Hiro had no problem roaming the streets of San Franskoyo after dark himself, he had great objection to Tadashi doing it. So much so, that he usually dropped whatever bot fight he was in the middle of to grab Tadashi and in most cases, literally carry him home. And once the two were home, Hiro knew that if he tried to sneak out again, Tadashi would make a big enough racket to wake Aunt Cass up.

Hiro tended to find the alarms that Tadashi set for himself and turned them off. Ensuring that Tadashi slept through the entire night. Other times, Tadashi was so exhausted from school and events during the day, he’d sleep straight through the alarm. Hiro stopped sticking to a schedule of when he’d go out bot fighting. Stopped going out on the weekends and kept more to random school nights, to double his chances of Tadashi not following.

It wasn’t a perfect system. But Hiro never said anything about Tadashi sneaking out and Tadashi never confronted Hiro about bot fighting. So it worked. For the most part, for the next four years anyway.

And then at fourteen, Tadashi hit on an idea. If Hiro wasn’t going to stop bot fighting, why couldn’t Tadashi join him? They could be a bot fighting team! The more he thought about it, the better it seemed. Hiro had started bot fighting when he was Tadashi’s age, so why couldn’t Tadashi start?

He didn’t expect Hiro’s response or the lengths Hiro would go to keep him out of bot fighting. When Tadashi met Professor Callaghan and joined the SFIT internship program, it was a bolt of understanding. Hiro belonged _here_ , not out on the streets playing far below his level, building custom bots of the same but slightly varying design over and over. He belonged in the Institute, in the labs and the lectures. Creating new things, improving on old things. Getting ready to take on the world.

And Tadashi was going to make sure his brother found his way back.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As first ER trips go, this one wasn't so bad

Hiro’s pretty damn sure he knows _exactly_ where the inspiration for Baymax came from. He can trace it all the way back to one specific incident in fact.

He had been ten, Tadashi was five (and a half!), they’d been living with Aunt Cass for two years. Aunt Cass had let him convert part of the garage into a workspace for himself. Once it became more and more obvious that his tinkering couldn’t be contained to the room he shared with Tadashi. Now that he had space in the garage, Hiro could also use tools that he couldn’t in the house. Sharper tools. And certainly more dangerous parts as well.

And though Hiro took great care when Tadashi was in the garage with him, he was lot more cavalier with his own safety.

It was really only a matter of time before something happened.

Thankfully it was during a time when Aunt Cass had already closed the cafe for the day. A blade Hiro was working with slipped and sliced a nice gash up the back of his arm.

Tadashi had been dumbfounded that there was something hurt or broken that Hiro couldn’t fix. Doubly so, because it was Hiro himself who got hurt.

“Hiro needs a doctor honey.” Aunt Cass said, surprising even herself with how calm she was being as she bundled the two boys into the back of her truck for the trip to the emergency room.

“But...Hiro can fix!” Tadashi protested, tugging on his brother’s shirt after he had been buckled in. Hiro grunted and pushed down harder on the towel wrapped around his arm.

“Not this one buddy.” Tadashi looked up at him with wide brown eyes.

“Why?” He demanded, not the least put off by the amount of blood soaking the towel around Hiro’s arm.

“Because, I’m not a machine, I don’t have the same parts.” There’s a brief pause as an idea occurs to Hiro. “That would be _sweet_. A cyborg? Totally cool.” Aunt Cass kept an eye on him through the rearview mirror as he pulled himself back on track. “But uh, since I’m not one right now, can’t fix this, I don’t know how. So I need to go to people who do.”

“Oh.” Tadashi’s voice was small. “Are you going to die?” He asked just as quietly. Aunt Cass bit her tongue but Hiro laughed.

“From this?” He waved his arm a little. “Nah. Probably get a few stitches.” He paused for a moment as a thought occurred to him. “It might even _scar_.” Hiro’s tone was far too excited for a kid headed to the emergency room in Cass’s opinion. But it had calmed Tadashi down and instead of continuing to be upset, he stared at Hiro for the entire ride.

He did demand to be allowed to watch the doctor give Hiro the stitches and after a semi intense round of negotiation, got his wish.

“Does it hurt?” Tadashi was leaning over Hiro’s side, watching the proceedings with rapt attention. The compromise had been Tadashi sitting on the side that Hiro hadn’t hurt. Hiro shrugged the shoulder not attached to the arm currently being sewn up.

“Kind of.” The doctor hummed.

“Must say, you’ve been my best patient today.” Hiro grinned at him.

At the end, Hiro’s arm was wrapped in a protective white bandage, and Aunt Cass was given several pamphlets of care instructions.

“Were you satisfied with your care?” The nurse asked and Hiro nodded his head. “Alright then, here’s a treat for being such good boys.” She presented both Hiro and Tadashi with red lollipops.

“Aw sweet.” Hiro crowed, sticking the lollipop into his mouth immediately. Tadashi took his time unwrapping the wrapper and seemed more interested in asking the nurse about her job then the candy.

“Now young man, I don’t want to see you back here for a _long_ time.” The receptionist said in a severe tone from behind the counter as she passed Aunt Cass the final forms. Hiro smiled at her. “Understand?”

“Sure thing!” He chirped around the candy. Little did anyone know that Hiro was going to be a very familiar face in the emergency room in the coming years. Clearly, years and years later, when Tadashi was programming Baymax, that first trip was at the forefront of his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiro's second home is the ER


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being sick sucked. Having food poisoning was worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was requested both in the comments of this fic and on my tumblr.  
> "Tell me anything prompt: sick younger tadashi and worried older hiro?"  
> Well, Tadashi is certainly sick...after a fashion, Hiro's not really all that worried.
> 
> Warnings for emetophobia/vomit this chapter.  
> Tadashi has food poisoning in the second half. I don't really go into detail.

Hiro broke bones left and right, had a number of scars from stitches and other cuts that hadn’t been deep enough for stitches and his bruise collection at any one time was impressive to say the least. Sprains and pulled muscles were the norm. The emergency room staff were all on a first name basis with Hiro. Despite this, for all the years spent together, Tadashi can only think of three times that Hiro had gotten sick. And not just horribly ill, but normal sick. Seasonal colds passed him by, classmates would drop like flies to the flu or to sniffles and Hiro would be the last man standing with nary a cough to his name.

In other words, his brother’s immune system was _insane_.

Tadashi was not so lucky.

He caught every single bug that went the rounds. Every last one. From colds, to flues, to chicken pox. If someone in his class came down with an illness, Tadashi was next in line to get it. He _hated_ being sick. Hated being stuck on his side of the room, quarantined to his bed until further notice. Hated the taste of cough medicine and throat drops. Hated even the thought of it. Would sink himself deep into a pit of denial at the first sign of a stuffy nose.

Hiro, of course, found the entire thing amusing.

“You get to take a day off, nerdling. Why so upset?” Tadashi would just glare at him, from the safety of a mound of comforters and tissues. Hiro’s laughter lingered after he left for the day, going out into the world Tadashi was now barred from.

The other reason Tadashi hated being sick was the _boredom_. During the day Aunt Cass was busy with the cafe and even when Hiro had dropped out of college, he’d still had things to do that kept him out and about. Picking up parts, dropping off bot orders, picking up new bot orders and building them in the garage lab. So Tadashi was left alone for the majority of the day, Aunt Cass checking in periodically. There was only so many hours of reading, tv or game playing he could do before he just wanted to get up. But Aunt Cass had some sort of magical sixth sense for sick kids and sneaking out of bed. As soon as Tadashi put even one foot down to head to the garage or pull out a school book or anything even remotely interesting. She was there. With a stern look of disappointment. And Tadashi _hated_ disappointing Aunt Cass more then anything.

But being sick wasn’t all bad.

The best part was the evenings. For the simple fact that because Hiro had the immune system of a god, he didn’t see any reason _not_ to spend the night stretched out on Tadashi’s sick bed, watching movies with him or, if Tadashi was really bad off, reading to him.

When Hiro was officially _in_ for the day, he stocked Tadashi up on water, (“Hydration is important bro!”) food, snacks, (“Is it starve a cold or feed it? I can never remember.”) and medication, if needed. (“Look, the airplane is coming in for a la-Ow! Stop hitting me! You’re sick, you shouldn’t be hitting people! You need to save your strength! Ow!”) After making sure that Tadashi was as restocked as possible, Hiro would grab his laptop and throw himself in the most dramatic way he could next to Tadashi. And then proceed to marathon whatever show had caught his attention recently. Hiro usually fell asleep first, for all that his brother was a humming pillar of energy, as soon as you got him to sit down (and _stay_ ), he crashed face first into dreamland.

Tadashi would never admit it, but watching movies on Hiro’s laptop in the dim light of his desk lamp, curled against his big brother’s side, listening to Hiro’s steady heart beat and deep breathing were some of the fondest memories of his childhood.

Food poisoning, however, is _not_.

“What the hel-heck, what the heck did you eat?” Tadashi would have smiled at Hiro’s near slip up, if he wasn’t currently curled around the toilet in their bathroom.

“I don’t know!” He wailed and had to perform a mad scramble to his knees as his stomach rebelled yet _again_. Finished heaving, he slumped back against the bathtub, gasping. A plastic cup  lowered into his line of sight, and wagged from side to side slowly. Tadashi whined, burying his face in his knees.

“Tough luck.” Hiro says from above him. “You need something in your stomach _and_ you’re at risk for dehydration. So, drink some water. It’s a win win.” Unable to argue with that logic, Tadashi accepted the cup with shaking hands. Taking small sips of the lukewarm water until the cup was half empty. Hiro accepted the cup back and Tadashi slid down the side of the tub until he was mostly puddled on the floor, eyes sliding shut from exhaustion.

He’d been stuck in a cycle of drinking water and vomiting every ten minutes since the early evening hours, when he’d steadily felt more and more nauseous until finally he’d had to make a break for the bathroom. His stomach had long since run out of actual contents to expel and was now just heaving up whatever water he managed to drink in between bouts of his body trying to purge itself of his organs. It was well past midnight, heading into extreme early morning territory and Tadashi was _tired_. He just wanted this food poisoning episode to be _over_ so he could _sleep_.

The sound of the toilet flushing only half way roused him but he woke up all the way when rough hands tugged him up to his wobbling feet. Hiro had been with him through the entire thing. Following along behind Tadashi’s sudden running into the bathroom, supplying him with water and helping him back to bed each time.

“Leave me here to _die_.” Tadashi managed to get out, throat raw and voice rough. Hiro’s hands are firm around his arms, supporting him on his swaying legs.

“Yeah, no. I’d hate to trip over your corpse every time I needed to pee.” Hiro heaved Tadashi up, half carried him back into their room and dumped him, gently, on his bed.

“I’m finished.” Tadashi mumbled as Hiro rolled him up in his blankets. “I want to be done.” His brother’s laugh was light, a hand ran down Tadashi’s back, leaving a warm soothing trail in its wake.

“I know, buddy.” The mattress shifted and Tadashi’s body rolled closer to the middle as Hiro climbed in next to him. Picking up the book he’d dropped on the side table in his haste to follow Tadashi. Tadashi shifted closer to Hiro’s side and his brother propped an elbow up on him. His stomach is still cramping, his throat is sore and he’s more tired then he can ever remember being but for the moment, the sound of his brother turning pages(speed reading was an old trick of Hiro’s), the dim glow of the desk lamp and the firm press of Hiro’s body next to his is enough.

“You’re staying home tomorrow I hope you know.” Hiro says offhandedly. Tadashi just mumbles. Staying home and sleeping sounds _so nice_ right now. And maybe, if Tadashi is _extra_ miserable, Hiro will spend the day designing from his computer desk, instead of running around. That would be awesome. His moment of peace comes to an abrupt and unwelcome end. Tadashi’s eyes suddenly snap open as his stomach roils. He’s out of the bed and into the bathroom again with Hiro’s voice trailing after him.

“I left the lid up this time!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspired by this past Christmas when the DAY BEFORE I had to fly back to my parents' I caught a nasty bout of food poisoning. It sucked SO BAD and I do not recommend it to anyone.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: Tadashi experiences first hand Hiro's nut allergy
> 
> A little different from what you're probably expecting in that I don't really think Hiro has a severe peanut allergy. But that doesn't mean Tadashi isn't going to freak out any less.

“Huh.” Tadashi stops, Hiro sounds a little bit confused, but not concerned. He’s staring at the cookie he’d just taken a bite out of. Tadashi jumps in surprise as Hiro ducks his head and viciously spits out the mouthful of cookie he’d been chewing onto the plate in front of him. “Aunt Cass!”

“What. What’s wrong?” Tadashi asks, feeling his heart start hammering in his chest because Hiro sounds completely normal, but his actions are not. Their Aunt appears at the top of the stairs. Her eyebrows drawn together in puzzlement. Hiro waves the cookie at her.

“Peanut butter cookie.” Hiro says, quickly, the words almost spilling over each other, but his tone remains the same level calm. Aunt Cass’s face turns from puzzlement to concern, she dashes up the stairs to the second level, feet slamming on each step. Tadashi hears her banging cabinets in her bathroom.

“Hiro?” Tadashi’s voice is small and scared and unsure. He doesn’t get what’s happening. Hiro smiles at him, the cookie now sitting innocently on the table.

“Small allergy to peanuts, nerdling. Nothing to worry about.” Nothing to worry about? Tadashi stared at Hiro open mouthed. Peanut allergies were most definitely _something to worry about_. “It’s mild.” Hiro said even as the area around his mouth started to turn an irritated red. How did Tadashi not know about this? Hiro’s thirteen years old, Tadashi has known him for all ten years of his own life and he’s _never_ , not once, heard of an allergy to peanuts before.

Then again, now that he thinks about it, there’s never really been much in the way of peanuts in their diet. None at all in fact. Aunt Cass gets him peanut butter for sandwiches because he asks her to, but Hiro never eats it. Or touches it. Or looks at it even. And there’s a distinct lack of peanutty items on the cafe’s menu.

Wow. For being smart, Tadashi is an _idiot_.

Aunt Cass arrives back in the kitchen knocking Tadashi out of his stupor. She slaps a packet of Benadryl and an epi pen on the table.

“How bad is it?” Hiro shakes his head.

“Itchy. But,” Hiro made a vague hand wave gesture. “Not too bad.” She hands him the Benadryl.

“You know the drill, kiddo.” Hiro downs two of the pills with half his glass of water and sits back. Aunt Cass tugs out a chair to settle in. Tadashi can’t do anything but stare at Hiro, at the one bite taken out of it cookie and back to Hiro again.

“You can stop looking at me like that.” Tadashi starts and shakes himself.

“Shouldn’t we be going to the hospital?” He asked, looking between Aunt Cass and Hiro. Aunt Cass shrugged helplessly.

“Hate hospitals.” Hiro muttered darkly, folding his arms over his chest. Probably because he already spent so much time at them for various accidents in the labs. “If this isn’t bad, I’m not going.” Typical stubborn Hiro. Tadashi had a feeling that ‘bad enough’ was rated as ‘not being able to breathe’. A sudden thought caused a rush of guilt to flood through Tadashi. He didn’t make a sound, but something must have shown in his demeanor, because Hiro nudged him with his elbow.

“What’s up? I’m going to be fine you know.”

“But.” Hiro raised an eyebrow, and Tadashi spurned himself on. “I gave you the cookie.”

“Yeah and? You didn’t know.” Hiro shrugged, already dismissing the problem. That did go a ways to alleviate Tadashi’s guilt but still left the other problem.

“Why didn’t I know?” Hiro tilted his head to the side, brow furrowed, he swallowed a few times. Aunt Cass leaned forward, the lines of her shoulders tense, a hand gripping the edge of the table. Only to sit back, slightly relaxed when Hiro shook his head absentmindedly and drummed his fingers against the tabletop.

“I’m still good.” He said in answer to the unasked question. “And uh...it honestly never came up?” Tadashi can’t help his arms snaking out and his fist smacking Hiro’s shoulder. Hiro yelped at the unexpected hit. “Seriously?” He grumbled, rubbing at his shoulder with a wounded pout. Tadashi pinched his lips together, and punched Hiro again, lower on the arm this time. “What is your _deal_?’ Hiro hissed, Aunt Cass fought to hide a smile behind her hand without either nephew noticing.

“You didn’t tell me!” Tadashi hissed back. “You didn’t tell me and I almost killed you!”

“ _Now_ you’re being melodramatic.” Hiro’s almost laughing, his voice doing that light, bubbly lilt that means he’s _so close_ to dissolving into snickering. So Tadashi hits him again, right in the same spot as the first time, he gets a small measure of pride from Hiro’s yelp. Food allergies were serious! Allergies to peanuts even more so! Tadashi knew Hiro took a very flippant approach to his own health and safety. His brother had an annoying habit of downplaying his own injuries. Tadashi was more than sure that would apply to Hiro’s allergies as well. Aunt Cass, perhaps seeing that Tadashi was just going to keep hitting Hiro until Hiro either broke or...broke down, places a hand on his forearm.

“In Hiro’s defense, it is just a slight allergy.” Aunt Cass says, patting Tadashi’s arm comfortingly. “Though that doesn’t excuse him from being a complete knucklehead about it.” Hiro rolls his eyes, Aunt Cass’s hand shoots off of Tadashi’s arm to twist his brother’s ear faster than Tadashi can follow it.

“Ow, ow, ow!” She lets go just as fast, her hand returning to patting his arm. “Geez, why is everyone ganging up on me?” Hiro grumbled, rubbing his ear instead of his arm. “I’m suffering from an allergic reaction here.” _That_ was what calmed Tadashi down. If Hiro was joking about the severity for sympathy points, then it wasn’t serious. It was when Hiro acted completely nonchalant that there was cause for concern.

“It was much worse when he was younger.” Aunt Cass settles herself more comfortably in her chair, now that it looks like Hiro is in the clear. “There was this one time he had a really bad reaction and wound up in the hospital. His lips swelled, like whoa!” She makes flicking gesture with her hands in front of her mouth and Tadashi giggles, laughs even harder at Hiro’s completely unimpressed look at their Aunt’s storytelling abilities. “You were just a small peanut yourself, so you probably don’t remember it.” She smiles over at Tadashi. “After that, we decided it would be easier to cut nuts out of the diet altogether.”

“It got better.” Hiro says defensively, still rubbing at his ear. “I’m not going to have to go to the hospital this time.”

He doesn’t, that part is true. After twenty minutes of nothing happening, Aunt Cass throws in the towel and goes back downstairs to the cafe. Tadashi continues monitoring Hiro, who does an amazing job pretending that Tadashi isn’t watching him like a hawk and shadowing his every move. Hiro continues his night like normal, but goes to bed early.

It takes Tadashi twice as long to fall asleep. No matter what Hiro or Aunt Cass say, he gave Hiro the cookie, and if Hiro had been younger or his allergies worse, they’d be in the hospital waiting room right now. Tadashi doesn’t think he’d be able to handle that. Sure, the emergency room at the hospital was practically their home away from home for the amount of times Hiro had accidentally injured himself in the pursuit of scientific enlightenment. But he’d never been there because of _Tadashi_. He’d never been seriously hurt because of something Tadashi had done, and it sits heavily in the bottom of Tadashi’s stomach, this solid weight of guilt and anxiety, that he could have been the cause for an emergency room trip.

His tossing and turning comes to an abrupt halt when his mattress dips. Hiro settles into the space beside him.

“Stop moving.” He mumbles sleepily into Tadashi’s hair. “Driving me up the damn wall.”

“’M _sorry_.” Tadashi means more than just accidently waking his brother up. A hand pats at his head, misses and gets his face instead; completely uncoordinated and almost poking Tadashi in the eye a few times because Hiro at just this side of awake has the reflexes of a drunk.

“Is okay.” He slurs, sighing as he stretches out on the bed. “Now you know.” So maybe Hiro was also talking about more than being woken up as well. Tadashi opens his mouth but when he tilts his head to look at Hiro, his brother is completely passed out. Hiro preferred sleeping on his stomach and suffocating himself with his pillow. Tadashi nudged him enough that Hiro’s head turned allowing his mouth to be clear, and curled his back against Hiro’s side.

It was not the most restful of sleep, but that had nothing to do with Tadashi’s mind working against him and everything to do with Hiro’s amazing ability to hog all the blankets and most of the space.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys, I had a really rough week and Odds Are wasn't happening. So I post this that's been sitting around on my hard drive since forever instead.  
> Based on a prompt from tumblr asking about Hiro's reaction to baby Tadashi.

When his parents first brought Tadashi home from the hospital, Hiro hadn’t really cared. He didn’t dislike his new baby brother, but he didn’t seem to particularly like him either. He was completely indifferent. More interested in his own small projects and studies then the newest member of the family. He was starting school soon, so he didn’t really have the extra attention to expand. The only thing he had really expressed was a rather spectacular tantrum over his parents’ attention being split. But after a block of time in the evenings was set aside specifically for Hiro and either parent, where he had the undivided attention of one or the other on a rotating basis, the subject was never brought up again.

Hiro’s general lack of interest worried his parents a little, but Tadashi’s own demands soon distracted them from it. As long as the two got along, there would be time later to foster a bond, was the general thought.

The two were like ships in the night until Tadashi started crawling. It seemed that while Hiro had little to no interest in Tadashi, Tadashi was plenty curious about Hiro. Hiro had a habit of spreading himself out on the livingroom floor. A habit that Tadashi took advantage of to get to know his distant sibling.

Hiro would be loudly playing with his toys, dinosaurs were a new favorite, and then suddenly there’d be a small fist yanking at his shirt, demanding his attention. And Tadashi would be there, staring up at him with wide brown eyes and a sloppy happy smile. Hiro’s immediate reaction had been to move to a different section of the living room and continue playing. Tadashi’s reaction was to doggedly crawl to the new section after Hiro. It was rather amusing to watch, their parents had to admit.

“Why does he follow me around?” Hiro asked at dinner one night. He didn’t seem upset with the extra attention, just extremely perplexed by it.

“Well, Tadashi likes you.” His mother tried to explain.

“He should like you more.” Hiro pointed out. “You feed him and everything.” Hiro had rather scrupulously read every baby book his parents had left lying around.

“Yes, but,” His mother struggled to find the right wording to help Hiro understand. Her oldest was a prodigy, but that didn’t exactly translate into understanding how feelings, how people, especially an infant, worked. “You’re closer to his size and he’s curious.” She finished weakly.

“Oh.” Hiro had tilted his head peering over at Tadashi across the dinner table, as though the infant was a particularly strange puzzle. Tadashi, noticing he had his brother’s attention, squealed and banged his cup against the plastic tray table of his high chair. “I still don’t get it.” Hiro mumbled.

The explanation seemed to have hit _something_ with Hiro, because he stopped essentially running away from Tadashi. Now when his brother yanked on his shirt, Hiro would wordlessly hand Tadashi one of his toys and went back to doing his own thing. Tadashi was content for the most part with this. Pressing himself up against his brother’s side, action figure or dinosaur clutched tightly in his small hands.

Then Hiro started school. And things got rough. Within the year he had already been bumped two grades, and before the end of the school year it was decided that he would be entering middle school in the fall.

Their lively, bright, curious young boy, turned surly and closed off. There were more then a few meetings with teachers and counselors and principals. Over Hiro’s grades of course, but also over his conduct in class and toward his peers.

At home, he did his homework, grumbling the entire time, at the kitchen table and then closed himself off in his room when he was done. He took apart the blender, the garbage disposal and the lawnmower, all in the span of a week, earning himself a banned from tv sentence as a result. His parents traded worried looks while Tadashi chewed a hole through his security blanket.

It came to a head when Tadashi learned to walk.

“Why do you like me!” Hiro all but shrieked when the first thing Tadashi walked to, was not either parent, but to his big brother. And that’s when it all came out.

Hiro wasn’t acclimating well to the social side of school. He was small, he was smart, he was picked on. He didn’t have any friends, didn’t understand why, just knew he was different and younger and the things that made all the adults like him, made all the other kids hate him.

“I don’t _get it_.” Hiro sobbed, his mother’s arms wrapped tightly around his small frame. “What’s _wrong_ with me?”

“There is _nothing_ wrong with you.” His mother’s voice was iron, surprising him into silence. “Hiro, darling, you are a very special young boy. The other kids just don’t know what to make of you.”

“Will they ever?” She pressed a kiss to his forehead. They’d found out early on that the worst thing they could do to Hiro, was lie. Santa had been a disaster in disguise.

“They might not. But you’ll always have us and Tadashi.” Hiro had nodded, only partially mollified. And his mother had gone right to the school the next day. Hiro’s parents worried the most that their son would run his way to high school graduation as quickly as possible and then never enter higher education. A compromise was worked out. Hiro would enter the sixth grade as planned in the fall. Half the day would be in regular classes and the other half would be spent in the Gifted and Talented tract. Smaller class size, with more specific focus on academics and advanced subjects.

His mother also signed Hiro up for the after school robotics club.

“He keeps taking apart all the appliances.” She said, as she filled out the forms. “If that’s not a red flag for this, then I don’t know what is.”

It worked, for the most part. Hiro still didn’t get along with the majority of his classmates, but he was a far cry from hating school as much as he had. The Gifted and Talented courses were enough to keep him engaged and occupied.

But it was the Robotics club that turned into the saving grace. It met three days a week after school, for an hour and a half, and completely captivated Hiro. The kids in the club were much more welcoming, and had sort of adopted him as a kind of mascot as well as member. The club itself more then filled his desire to take things apart to see how they worked, it also taught him how to put things together. Something he very much excelled at and his parents were quite happy to buy the very complicated looking robot and model kits from the hobby shops that would occupy Hiro for an afternoon or evening.

 

Which just left them with the problem of Hiro and Tadashi. Tadashi was still extremely enamoured with his older brother. Sitting near him, following him as fast as his smaller legs allowed, trying to play with Hiro’s school books and homework. And Hiro...didn’t really seem to notice. He never got mad at Tadashi’s antics, or lashed out. He’d gone back to his strategy of just moving to where Tadashi couldn’t follow.

It was decided that Hiro’s father would be the one to sit him down for the big brother talk 2.0. Since the first hadn’t really made an impression.

“Hiro, you’re Tadashi’s big brother.” His father said one night, the two were sitting on the couch after dinner, Tadashi being given his bath. Hiro’s glanced up at his father curiously.

“Yeah?”

“Well, that carries some pretty big responsibilities. The way he’s going, Tadashi will look up to  you. Metaphorically.” He amended, Hiro was a very literal thinker and he could practically see his son’s ‘but he already looks up to me’ on the tip of the boy’s tongue. “He’s going to see you as a role model. He’s going to try to copy your behavior, he’s going to want to follow you everywhere, he’s going to want to do everything you’re doing. You might not understand why, but to Tadashi you are one of the greatest things in the world.”

“Well I am pretty cool.” Hiro mumbled, picking at the bottom of his shirt. His father grinned and ruffled Hiro’s hair.

“We’re going to need your help. You can look out for Tadashi, you can help him when we can’t. Understand?” Hiro nodded. “I know it’s a big responsibility, and it’s going to be hard sometimes, but it’s something only you can do. So what do you say?” Hiro looked up at him, determination in the set of his face. Hiro lived for challenges.

“I’m going to be the best big brother _ever_.” His father laughed.

“Atta boy.”


End file.
